True World War Ii

The Legend of Lilia is the story of Lilia Litvyak, who at 15 made her first solo flight in a wood-and-canvas biplane. By the age of 21, she was the most dangerous woman in the sky as an ace fighter pilot over the Eastern Front during World War II. Research was gathered through in-person interviews in post-Soviet Russia with veteran female pilots and mechanics, colonels of Lilia's regiment, historians, and declassified records from Soviet archives.

In 1945, Ditha Bruncel was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbors were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time, more than fifteen hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII. Twenty-three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column—and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One among them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with.

George Mergenthaler, the grandson of the inventor of the Linotype, was an only child, and at the time of his birth in 1920, became the sole male heir the family fortune. Tall, handsome, Ivy League educated, speaking fluent German and French, "Merg" as he was know to his friends, did what many in his generation did following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor: He enlisted in the Army.

Trapped inside a burning Lancaster bomber, 20,000 feet above Berlin, airman John Martin consigned himself to his fate and turned his thoughts to his fiancee back home. In a miraculous turn of events, however, the 21-year-old was thrown clear of his disintegrating airplane and found himself parachuting into the heart of Nazi Germany. He was soon to be captured and began his period as a prisoner of war.

In 1942 the young soldier Arthur Dodd was taken prisoner by the German Army and transported to Oswiecim in Polish Upper Silesia. The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass breakout.

Compassionate Soldier illuminates some of the most fascinating and yet largely unknown stories of men and women whose humanity led them to perform courageous acts of mercy and compassion amid the chaos and carnage of war. Arranged by war from the American Revolution to the Iraq War and global in perspective, it features extraordinary stories of grace under fire from valiant soldiers and noncombatants who rose above the inhumanity of lethal conflict and chose compassion.

This concise, fast listen tells the true story of a self-made double agent who bluffed his way into the most ambitious Allied deception operation of WWII. In 1942, German military intelligence believed the Spaniard Juan Pujol Garcia was running a formidable spy network for them inside enemy Britain. In reality their man in London was making it all up, from Portugal. Pujol had fooled the Germans all on his own after the British embassies in Madrid and Lisbon rejected his services repeatedly.

As eleven-year-old Peter Nottage stood in the yard, watching in disbelief, a group of Japanese fighter planes swooped down, spraying machine-gun fire across the water. Then the first bomb dropped - and in minutes, Kaneohe Bay was a sea of smoke and flames. To the south, at Pearl Harbor, the huge ships of the American fleet were ablaze. This was no drill. This was war!

When Adolf Hitler stormed to power in Germany during the 1930s, he experienced little opposition for his plans to re-build his adopted homeland after the restraints put upon the country and the reparations they were forced to pay to the victorious Allies in the aftermath of the First World War. Nevertheless, it may come as a surprise to discover that as early as 1938, even before the outbreak of World War II, conspiratorial groups had developed within the German army, with the objective of actually preventing Hitler launching a global conflict.

Quanti conoscono la parola "Porrajmos"? Porrajmos nella lingua della maggior parte dei rom e dei sinti significa "divoramento" e indica lo sterminio che il Terzo Reich attuò nei loro confronti. Una persecuzione su base razziale che portò alla morte di oltre 500.000 persone. Nell'audiolibro "Porrajmos" abbiamo raccolto l'intensa testimonianza di Otto Rosenberg, un sinto tedesco nato a Berlino nel 1927. Già nel 1936, alla vigilia dei giochi olimpici di Berlino, Otto Rosenberg fu deportato nel lager di Marzhan.

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and hallucinations.

The World Wars of the 20th century caused massive upheavals all over the world. Often overlooked by history are the extraordinary true-life stories of the brave women from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who enlisted in the Allied forces in their thousands to serve as nurses behind the front lines, at great danger to themselves.

The Second World War changed the course of modern history. It is filled with incredible stories of daring risks and exceptional struggles, but in the popular imagination, these stories are more often than not the stories of men. There is, however, a hidden treasure trove of untold stories of heroic women who have risked their lives in the monumental battle against fascism. We’ve heard of women who became nurses treating soldiers with battlefield injuries, partisans who fought occupying armies, and skilled laborers who worked in wartime industries.

The Battle for Hong Kong seems lost in the shadow of other battles in Southeast Asia, such as Malaya, Singapore, Burma, and the Philippines. But while the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong Island lasted just one week from 18-25 December 1941, it was highlighted by horrific atrocities involving wounded Allied soldiers, and medical doctors, nurses, orderlies and patients. None worse than the massacre at St Stephen's College, which had transformed into a makeshift hospital.

During the war period, an estimated 5,000 females served as guards in concentration camps. These Nazi wardresses would often times be more brutal than their male counterparts. The graphic violence that occurred under the watch of these women would go on to shock and terrify the public. Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, the movie that essentially spawned the cult subgenre that is now known as Naziploitation, or Nazi Exploitation, was based on Ilse Koch, an overseer at several concentration camps run by her husband, Karl-Otto Koch.

L'opération Anthropoid est l'opération montée en vue d'assassiner le dignitaire nazi Reinhard Heydrich. L'attentat se déroule à Prague le 27 mai 1942 et Heydrich meurt huit jours après des suites de ses blessures. Planifiée par le Special Operations Executive, le service secret britannique qui soutenait les Résistances européennes lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, cette opération est exécutée par deux soldats tchécoslovaques, entraînés en Grande-Bretagne et parachutés sur le territoire du protectorat de Bohême-Moravie.

On June 10, 1940, Italians living in Britain learned the news they had been fearing the most. Ten months into the Second World War, Mussolini's Italy had entered the conflict on the side of Hitler's Germany and declared war on Britain. Overnight, Italians residing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland became enemy aliens. In London, Leeds, Cardiff and Glasgow, Italian shops, cafés and restaurants were smashed and looted.

My parents were an exceptional couple. Their characters and influence in the local community, the farming world, and in a much wider sphere were significant. My father’s contribution to the war effort in the Solomon Islands, and the well-deserved Silver Star awarded to him by the Americans, is a unique story that you will not find in many of the war histories. My mother also made a huge impact in her community and was awarded a QSM for her work.

The true story of a man's courageous decision to join the resistance group in the fight against the Nazi regime in occupied Denmark during WWII. After being captured by the Germans, he would have to endure two of the most gruesome Concentration Camps until a Scandinavian rescue mission eventually helped bring him, and thousands of other prisoners, back home. This story was written by the main character's granddaughter.

Au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le système Double Cross (en anglais Double Cross System ou XX System, double cross signifiant tromper) était un dispositif de contre-espionnage organisé par le MI5, le service de renseignements britannique actif sur le territoire du Royaume-Uni, qui eut pour finalité la désinformation des services secrets allemands. Des agents nazis ont été capturés et retournés puis utilisés par les Britanniques principalement pour diffuser de fausses informations à leurs officiers-traitants allemands.